CHAPTER EIGHT

THE PENINSULA
MONSTER

At this point I submit the eeriest,
weirdest UFO prediction I have made yet (and remember, if the UFOs
did not tell me themselves, how else would I know when, or where
they would appear, or what they were going to do?).

In a letter to George Clark and
contacts, July 11, 1966, I wrote some predictions, then added:

The Si's are near this area, and
are about to make a move that will bring them to public notice
again, just in case people are forgetting them. Something startling.
They are getting restless because I am not getting anywhere with the
U.S. Government.

How right I was (of course I was,
the Si's had told me to write that).

Front Page, The Morning News, Erie,
Pa., August 1, 1966:

UFO SIGHTED ON PENINSULA, GIRL
DESCRIBES LANDING

An unidentified flying object was
sighted on the Peninsula shortly after dusk Sunday night. A
Jamestown, N.Y., girl described by Peninsula police as being almost
hysterical, near shock, said a craft suddenly appeared in the night
sky from the north and landed about 300 yards from the car she was
sitting in. She was identified as Betty Jean Klem, 359 Brodhead
Ave., Jamestown, N.Y. Peninsula police were taking the statement
from her and several friends today. Miss Klem gave the following
account to a Morning News reporter:

"We were sitting in the car waiting
for help. Our car was stuck in the sand. We saw a star move. It got
brighter. It would move fast, then dim. You could see it come down.
It was metallic. Sort of silvery. It landed between two trees. It
came straight down. The car vibrated. I know we saw it. We had taken
a walk up in that area earlier. There was nothing between those
trees then. All of a sudden it was just there. We could see the
lights on the back."

(She later described the craft as
being mushroom shaped with a narrow base rising up to an oval
structure.)

The sixteen year old girl was still
shaking as she talked to the newsman and police officers. Her eyes
were red from crying. Police described her as a pretty sensible
young woman.

Peninsula Police Chief Dan Dasconio
said, "I know what people are going to say, but this girl saw
something that scared her badly. This is no joke as far as I'm
concerned."

The girl said that as she and her
boyfriend, Douglas J. Tibbets, eighteen, of Greenhurst, N.Y.,
watched from the front seat of his car a beam of light came out of
the craft and moved along the ground in a straight line.

"It lit up the whole woods along
its path. It wasn't like a search light. There was light along the
ground, along its whole path."

She said the light did not waver
back and forth like a search light, but continued to extend its beam
into the woods. Shortly after the light went into the woods, there
occurred the most horrible part of her ordeal, according to the
girl. She related that a Peninsula police car approached from behind
and pulled up near their stuck vehicle. She said as it did so the
beam from the UFO light went out. Her boyfriend jumped from the car
and told the officers, "There's something weird going on here."

The officer accompanied the youths
down the road about 300 yards to a point near where they said the
craft had landed. Just as they approached the area the horn sounded
in the boy friend's car and they ran back.

The girl said there was a "thing
right by the car. I don't know what it was. It was bigger than you,"
she told the newsman. It was about six feet tall. "You would have
had to look up to see it."

In a very brief sketch that the
girl drew of the "Thing" it appeared to have the general shape of an
upright, large creature, such as a gorilla, although she maintained
it was not any kind of animal that she has ever seen before. She
described it as a dark, apparently featureless creature, not human,
maybe animal, which moved sluggishly back into the bush after she
had leaned on the horn after seeing it.

In her interview by the Morning
News, she made the following comments: "The ship was big. It came
half-way up between these trees." (Officials said the trees are 60
to 70 feet tall).

"When it came down and landed, the
car vibrated. We had the car radio on. I think it was WICU Radio.
No, it didn't make any interference on the radio."

(Note: The Si's have explained to
me that when they come down to examine a car or vehicle, or a town,
they throw out a "web" of power which knocks out electricity, car
batteries, radios, etc., so that whatever they are examining cannot
escape, or radio or signal by mechanical means for help. Evidently
in this case they had reason not to project such a power-web. Owens)

Asked if it made any kind of noise,
she said, "It sounded like the noise in a telephone receiver, only
louder, of course. Then it stopped. When it landed there were no
lights on it. Then some lights came on by the back of it. The oval
top. The others asked me if I saw it. We just couldn't believe it
was really happening."

At one point during the interview,
she suddenly said,

"We heard someone walking on the
roof. No, it wasn't stomping. It was more like scratching. We didn't
see anything then. We didn't get out of the car. I was a nonbeliever
about this space craft business. But I believe now."

Things happen fast readers. August
3, two days later, a farmer took a picture of a UFO at New Castle,
Pa., which was believed to be the same one seen at Preseque Isle
Peninsula, on Aug. 1, by the girl and her friends. Next day, August
2, after the girl and her friends had their encounter, huge
claw-prints were found in the sand of a beach nearby. They "were
staggered, as if made by a walking creature". Patrolmen said the
imprints were five to six feet apart. Later in the day the same
imprints were found leading to the water of the lake. Patrolmen were
particularly intrigued by the markings on the imprints which
appeared to have been made by claws. They said, "It was as if you
were to take four fingers and press hard in the sand". Patrolmen
were also amazed by the sharpness of the impressions in the soft
sand. Scratches and dents were also found on the car the teenagers
had been in.